Following Morgan Stanley's lead, RGA asked a teenager, Sean Brewer, to conduct research into insurance. The results, with a foreword from Greg Becker, were enlightening
Oddly, pensions are another matter. Respondents were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement – ‘I am not worried about my pension yet. I will sort it out in the future.’ More than 70% of the under-18s who responded strongly disagreed or disagreed with this statement.
Another interesting relationship revealed by the data was the description of the word ‘insurance’. Many of the words supplied by people were negative. The most surprising discovery was to do with the word ‘money’. It was mentioned 70 times in people’s answers, 61 times by people under 30.
A high proportion of young people use the social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook to communicate with others. Both sites are extremely well known and are in worldwide use, with Facebook having more than 100m users. The survey showed a high percentage (70%) of under-30s use Facebook daily.
This seems to indicate that social websites are the way forward. Advertising on these types of sites will hopefully open the eyes of the younger generation and encourage them to buy life insurance. The use of advertisements before new or popular songs on YouTube will spread the knowledge of insurance to young adults, because the adverts cannot be skipped through.
If the advert is less than a minute long, young people will not mind waiting. The majority (62%) of under-30s surveyed used YouTube daily, so this could be an effective approach. Twitter is a relatively new social site compared with Facebook. At the moment, it seems people either tweet hourly/daily (37%) or not at all (50%).
Obviously, the main drawback for most studies is sample size. To ensure that the data is more reliable and to make the study successful, it is recommended that as many people as possible are encouraged to complete a survey.
However, one main problem for young people is that they distrust large financial organisations due to events over the past few years, with the financial meltdown in the banking industry, leaving a number of them partially nationalised, and the whole industry with a bad reputation.
If insurance companies spent time in schools and around the local centres this would send a positive message to the community. Doing this will enable them to communicate more easily with the younger generation and hopefully repair their tarnished reputation. Before I went to RGA I had no idea of the concept of life insurance, and many other people in the same age bracket as me still have no idea.
Sean Brewer is aged 16 and was on work experience with RGA
Chart 1: Life insurance?
Chart 2: Why do you not have life insurance?
